This relates generally to wireless communications, and, more particularly, to electronic devices that have multiple antennas for supporting wireless communications.
Electronic devices such as portable computers and cellular telephones are often provided with wireless communications capabilities. For example, electronic devices may use long-range wireless communications circuitry such as cellular telephone circuitry and WiMax (IEEE 802.16) circuitry. Electronic devices may also use short-range wireless communications circuitry such as WiFi® (IEEE 802.11) circuitry and Bluetooth® circuitry.
Wireless electronic devices often have more than one antenna. For example, cellular telephones often use one antenna for handling one type of traffic such as cellular telephone traffic and use a separate antenna for handling a different type of traffic such as local area network traffic.
In some wireless devices, multiple antennas are used in parallel for handling the same type of data traffic. For example, a portable computer may use an array of multiple-input multiple-output antennas to handle IEEE 802.11n wireless local area network traffic. This type of arrangement may enhance throughput relative to arrangements that use only a single antenna, but requires the use of multiple parallel radio-frequency transceiver circuits. This can lead to increases in power consumption and device complexity.
It would therefore be desirable to be able to provide improved antenna arrangements for electronic devices.